Such Gentle Hands
by Sakurane
Summary: Scott has lost Allison during a violent confrontation with the Alpha Pack. He must learn to accept life with her gone, but he is reluctant to give his heart to another girl, Savannah, after failing to save Allison. With the threat of Deucalion still in the air, and new supernatural events in Beacon Hills, Scott and Derek just may have a bigger war on their hands than ever before.


**Hey guys! This is a new story that I'm trying to work on since I've started watching copious amounts of Teen Wolf (although I won't be following the canon exactly). It'll be angsty in the beginning (this chapter especially), but I'm hoping that this story will become more than that. I'd love some review for encouragement with this one!**

It is reported as yet another Beacon Hills animal attack.

When Scott had been separated from Allison in the past, it had felt like he had lost a limb—phantom pains would go through him when he was unable to see her, unable to hear her voice or touch her soft skin. But when she died, it was far worse than he could have ever imagined in his wildest imagination, because there was no pain that had even come close before. A werewolf's claws ripping into him would have hurt less. He had felt like his heart had been carved out of his chest, and there was a hollow cavity where Allison had once been.

He'd never really thought that he would lose her. Even as they'd fought the supernatural and rebelled against her family's traditions, their lives being put in danger night after night, the arrogant part of his teenager brain had never truly thought that Allison would die. He'd thought that he could protect them no matter what.

So stupid of him.

So when she was bleeding out from gash wound to her side, her breaths becoming shallower and more ragged, the scene went horribly. Any words that he should have said, his goodbyes and professions of love, completely left his mind. Reality didn't set in until hours later, when he body was colder than the cement beneath them, and he hated himself for all the things that he hadn't told her. He'd frozen up, and hadn't even tried to ease Allison in her passing to the afterlife. There was just fear and disbelief and her weak hands gripping his shirt. The ground was slick with blood and rain.

He didn't even kiss her, inaction that he will probably regret for the rest of his life.

Scott's last moments were spent laying his forehead against hers, their skin clammy and wet, and his mouth only centimeters from hers. If he could breathe away her pain with that small distance, he would have. If he could have shouldered death instead of her, he would have in a heartbeat. Anything to being the color back to her cheeks.

Senior year begins, and Scott has never felt so alone, because Allison Argent is really and truly gone from this world forever.

&.&

Scott goes through the motions of normality, and for the first time in a long while, his life is _human _normal. The Alpha pack is scattered in Beacon Hills, no longer a threat. The remaining Argents have disappeared. He goes to school, plays lacrosse, even does his homework and scrapes by the end of his Junior year with better grades than he's had in all of High School. He goes out with friends more often, now that he doesn't have to run around all hours of the night trying to hunt stray werewolves or avoid getting cut in half by an Argent. There are no more mysteries to solve, and Scott is finally living the life that he had always wanted—people know he exists, he's a star athlete, and his crippling asthma is gone. But he has also lost a spark of joy that was always present in him when Allison was around.

Derek is a larger part of his life now that Allison is gone. Derek worries that without his anchor, Scott will go mad.

He wants to tell Derek that he couldn't go insane, even if he wanted too, because there isn't enough left in him. He hasn't told Derek that he hasn't been transforming much anymore, a fact that would probably worry the Alpha more than if he went on a homicidal rampage. Not even the full moon could pull him, his instincts becoming little more than a dull ache in the back of his mind.

Melissa invites the entire pack over once in a while, with Lydia and Stiles and Danny, a strange rag tag group of damaged teenagers and broken men. These nights are loud Stiles calls Derek Mama Wolf on more than one occasion, leading to Derek threatening him with bodily harm. This makes Scott chuckle, and after a while, he wonders if Stiles and Derek only play enemies for his benefit. Everyone hovers, because they can tell when a pack member is hurt.

Scott still has a lot of healing to do.

&.&

It's the first lacrosse match of the year. Scott is hardly surprised to see Derek standing beside his mother, his characteristic scowl on his face. The full moon is approaching, and he was to be sure that Scott isn't a loose canon on the field. He shouldn't have bothered, because Scott barely feels any of the rush of werewolf blood in his veins.

Stiles is finally first string after practicing with Scott and Isaac all summer, and he does a dance when he manages to assist Isaac and the werewolf scores. Adrenaline helps Scott, somewhat, bringing feeling back to his limbs and sharpening his senses, but he still doesn't feel whole.

But he has learned to pretend.

"Do you hate me?" Derek asks plainly, and at Melissa's blank expression, he continues, "Do you hate me for biting your son? For ever bringing him into this world?"

"I probably did, for a while. You've put Scott and his friends in a lot of danger, Derek Hale, and no mother wants that for her child."

He doesn't disagree. Somehow, he needs this conversation to happen, needs to confront his own guilt, otherwise it will haunt him. Derek is used to rationalizing his turning young, impressionable, weak teenagers. He likes to think that he is rescuing them, as in Isaac's case, granting them a power that each of them wants in some form. But after seeing Scott holding Allison's body, seeing a young boy's life torn apart, he questions himself. Is he selfish, wanting to create a family around him? Is he wrong for cursing others to become like himself?

"I didn't even give him a choice." Derek admits. He is digging his own grave in front of Scott's mother, but he feels that this needs to be said.

Melissa is quiet for so long that Derek thinks she isn't going to say anything. Is she silently condemning him in her mind? Hating him for ruining her son's life?

Finally she responds, so quietly that he wouldn't have heard without his werewolf senses. "I like to think that I'm a good judge of character, Derek, and from what I've seen, you aren't a bad person. But you're very young… young enough to make mistakes. I can't say that I forgive you for turning Scott without his permission, but the bite didn't turn him into a monster. Scott is still the most gentle and kind boy that I know, and he's still my son. Sure, I wish that things with Allison had gone differently, and I wish more than anything that Scott hadn't been so hurt in all of this… but this is the world we live in. It's cruel, and it's dark, and we've all just had our eyes opened. I can't hate you for that, Derek, when there's so much that you can't control, either. Scott has learned to love, and he's learned to feel loss, and now he'll learn to get back on his feet."

Derek is astounded by her words, and consciously knows that this is the power of the love of a mother. He hasn't known until this moment how badly he has wanted someone to forgive him, assure him that the entire mess isn't all his fault. He suddenly feels like a child again, seeking assurance from his mother.

"But that doesn't mean that you get to keep me in the dark anymore, Derek Hale. I'm in this now too, and I'll stand by my son's side no matter what monsters go bump in the night. This is something that you have to accept, or else I can't allow Scott to help you. There are no more secrets between you and me, you understand?"

"I do."

"Good. Then I want your honest opinion: is Scott alright? He's gotten good at hiding his feelings from me, but I know there's a whole other side of him that I have to worry about now, too."

Derek knows that she means his werewolf side. "He's not going to kill anybody. Scott is in control of himself, at least."

"But he's really not okay, is he?" Melissa draws from what he has omitted.

Derek's lips tighten. "It's my responsibility, and the responsibility of my pack, to make sure that he will be."

They win the game by a landslide, not surprising considering that they have werewolf strength on their side, and the crowd comes onto the field. Even Lydia is there, despite the fact that lacrosse always reminds her of Jackson and generally avoids it.

"Nice playing out there, McCall. If Jackson was still here, you might've even been giving him a run for his money," She says archly, and Stiles slides next to his friend. "Stiles… I guess you can be the best human."

She can't seem to stop mentioning Jackson, even though he'd broken her heart over and over. But one name that never crosses her lips is _Allison. _The loss of her first real friend is too much for Lydia to cope with.

As he strides away into the darkness, Derek swears to himself that he will tell Melissa everything—that the reason that Stiles' father isn't at the game is that another body has been found in the woods, eyeballs gouged out—that Deucalion's body had never actually been found that night in the warehouse, and everyone had been too distraught over Allison's death to search thoroughly—and that he isn't entirely sure that Erica is dead. Now isn't the time, as Melissa embraces her son and congratulates him, suggesting that he and his friends go out for pizza. They are innocent, and Derek hopes to keep it that way.

&.&

"Rose, what the hell are you doing here?" Stiles sputters, his face heating up. The last thing he ever could have expected is one of his classmates to burst into his room while he's blasting Bruno Mars and dancing around in his boxers and making kissy faces at himself in his mirror. Even worse, it's Rose Killian, the bossy girl who sits next to him in History and always raises her hand to correct the teacher.

"I came to make sure you did your part of the history assignment." She says, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. Stiles finds himself gaping like a fish as his mind fires crazy thoughts at him, not knowing how he should react to a girl in his bedroom while he's half-naked. He supposes he should be grateful that he hadn't been doing something _more _embarrassing.

He scrambles for a shirt, luckily many of which are strewn across his floor. "And you feel as if barging into my room on a Saturday morning is a rational action to take? I think a phone call would have been sufficient!"

"If I had your number, maybe I would have. You may not know this, but that project is due on Tuesday, and you haven't been in class half of the week. I want to make sure you're doing your part, because I'm not picking up the slack for you."

"Do you have _no _faith in me?"

"Dude, you're barely ever at school, excuse me for not having confidence in your dedication to academia. I need a good grade on this project, and I'm not going to let you screw it up for me!"

Stiles can't help but be a little offended—he would never sabotage another student's school career, even if he abandoned his own for chasing around werewolf packs in the middle of the night. Hey, he was making a difference, protecting the innocents of Beacon Hills!

He doesn't tell her this, of course, because his tongue has managed to become thoroughly tied in his mouth. She takes his silence as an invitation and walks in, nose wrinkling at the mess. There's hardly time to clean up between school and life threatening confrontations with furry ferocious beasts, but Stiles does rush around to at least clear a path between his clothes and papers, because he does kind of care what Rose thinks.

She looks strange to him outside of school. Now that they aren't sitting down, he really notices just how petite she is, barely to his shoulder, but with claws like a fierce little kitten. She sweeps some of her short brown hair across her forehead, than places her hands on her hips in challenge.

"So? Where's your research?"

"Jeez, just give me a second. You kind of caught me off guard, busting in here with no warning. Have a seat, make yourself comfortable." He gestures to his bed, where he probably hasn't actually slept in at least a week, the sheets thrown haphazardly on. He hopes they don't smell or anything.

Her nose wrinkles again. "I think I'd rather not."

He shrugs. "Suit yourself. And how'd you get in here, anyway?"

"Your house, you mean? A magical thing known as a doorbell. Your dad sent me up the second I mentioned schoolwork."

"Figures." Stiles mutters, lifting piles of papers here and there in search of his part of the report on the Salem Witch Trials. Unfortunately, it was somewhere mixed in with his research on werewolf lore, which was plentiful. When Stiles couldn't sleep, he researched, and the photos of wolfsbane and other mystical plants, newspaper clippings on supposed "animal attacks", and articles printed from the internet tacked up along his wall and around his bedroom are fruits of his labor. He likes to be useful to Scott and the others, even without claws and fangs.

He racks through his memory, trying to remember where he'd put the report, because he'd gotten it done ages ago on a night when nightmares had made sleep impossible.

"Right!" He bursts out, remembering and smacking himself on the forehead, and Rose gives him a strange look.

He kicks a pile of clothing out from in front of his closet and pulls it open, reaching up on a shelf and grabbing the fourth shoebox from the right. His memory hadn't failed him as he removes the report. He shoves it under Rose's nose, ruffling the pages.

"You can look it over if you want. I've got some other websites bookmarked if you aren't pleased with my work, Princess."

She glares at him, but takes the stapled report from him, trying not to look impressed. Even if it was over ten pages, it could be absolute crap, she tells herself.

Unfortunately for her pride, it is far from that. Stiles is thorough and to the point with his writing, but the simplicity isn't due to lacking details, there just aren't any wasted words, which she finds ironic considering that Stiles suffers from projectile word vomit in conversation. Honestly, Stiles had done not only her work, but Scott's and Savannah's as well. When she's done skimming it, she hands it back to the boy.

"I admit that I underestimated you, Stilinski." Rose says, mollified. She decides that she'd probably overstayed her welcome and then some.

"Many have underestimated the Great Stilinski, and all have been pleasantly—or unpleasantly—surprised." Stiles says with a crooked smile, and Rose snorts.

"Well, I wouldn't go _that _far." She says, eyeing the open door, shuffling towards it. "I guess I'd better go. I'm glad that you actually did do work, otherwise I would have had to kick your ass."

"Wait," Stiles says. He likes to think that he's become good at reading people, especially after prolonged exposure to Derek the Sourwolf, and he goes out on a limb with Rose.

"Was there anything else that you wanted? Something that you want to ask me, maybe?"

She doesn't tell him that he's crazy, and instead bites her lip, an action that draws Stiles' attention there. He mentally slaps himself for being a sexually deprived and horny teenager, because he definitely doesn't think of Rose like that. Not that he denies that she's pretty with her mocha colored skin and athletically trim body, because Stiles isn't blind and notices how nice her legs look when she wears her summer dresses (he is, as he said before, a sexually deprived teenage boy). But he also doesn't have time to like other girls with Lydia-worship taking up such a large portion of his daily routine. Pining after Lydia is just easier, especially because she is the biggest mystery of all in Beacon Hills, and his interest in her both clinically and romantically is like killing two birds with one stone.

"Actually, I… I did have something that I wanted to talk to you about."

Stiles sits down on his desk chair and scoots it close to his bed, patting the bed as another offered seat. Rose creeps away from the door and sits down, her ankles crossed.

Stiles laces his hands behind his head, trying in vain to look cool, then settles for crossing his arms instead. "Ask away, Rose. I am the King of Answers."

"I'm pretty sure that no one calls you that."

"Yeah… well they should." He thinks of all the times he's saved the pack's butt with his brain.

Rose sighs. "Look, I know this is kind of weird considering we barely know each other—"

"And yet you've already ventured further into my room than any girl ever has before." Stiles says with amusement and a bit of self-pity, because this isn't the kind of suave thing that you're supposed to say to girls.

"Yes, well, I can't say I really find that surprising. But that's beside the point. I want to ask you about Scott."

He wants to roll his eyes, because every girl is interested in Scott—I mean, who wouldn't be, he thinks, with his best-friend's drool worthy abs, dreamy brown eyes, and uneven (but also dreamy) jawline? After Allison had died, they'd all flocked around him, hoping to be the one who could mend his broken heart, and they'd found his sensitivity and sadness completely endearing. Too bad Scott is an antisocial stuttering mess when they got ahold of him.

Rose isn't the first one to try and get to Scott through Stiles.

It's a useless gesture by those girls, because Scott isn't the rebound kind of guy, and it hasn't even been a year yet. It doesn't help that Allison had been taken violently and without warning.

Stiles swallows back disappointment, because he hadn't thought that Rose was one of those kinds of girls.

"Yes, those tattoos on his bicep are real, he and Isaac do not have a bromance going on and don't have sex all over the locker room, and no, he is not currently seeing anyone."

Rose once again looks at him like he's crazy.

He explains. "Just covering the usual questions."

She recoils with disgust. "Okay, first of all, eww no, I am not interested in Scott. Secondly, I so do not need to know about Scott of Isaac's sexual habits. And thirdly, I just wanted to know what's up with him?"

Stiles blinks, not comprehending the question.

"He's just so… blah. Like he's nice and everything, maybe a little slow, but he never seems to _connect _to anyone."

"You're talking about Savannah, aren't you?" Stiles guesses. He, Rose, Scott, and Savannah are all in the same History class, and they are partners for most projects like this. Rose is the driving force behind most of their conversations, usually having a battle of wits and matching sarcasm with Stiles, but occasionally Scott and Savannah would have their own conversation. Stiles saw on more than one occasion the side Scott's mouth quirk in shyness as Savannah spoke to him, and just when it seemed like Scott was about to laugh, something in his eyes would dull, and he would sort of shrink into himself, turning back into the usual polite, if slightly indifferent, Scott. Savannah was the first girl to even come close to bringing out the old Scott who would smile widely with abandon, sometimes for no reason at all. Every time he did smile now, it seemed to be more for other people's benefit than out of genuine amusement. Stiles liked to think that he could always get a true laugh out of Scott, though.

"Yeah. She's got a thing for Scott, but I'm not sure that he's emotionally there at all. I'm worried about her, because if he's not interested, than he should stop encouraging her."

"You're pretty perceptive," Stiles says, hesitating as he decides how much to tell Rose. "Scott is sort of distant because he lost a girl that he was in love with last year."

"So he's just nursing a broken heart?" Rose says skeptically, looking unimpressed.

"Well, she died, so it's kind of more complicated than that." He doesn't mention that she was murdered in front of Scott's eyes after stopping him from turning into an Alpha while Deucalion held Scott's mother hostage in the basement of a storage building. He doesn't describe how Allison had refused to let Scott give in and lose control, fighting Deucalion herself while Scott focused on using his werewolf abilities to locate his mother. To the very end, Allison had kept him calm, even when Deucalion's claws had ripped into her side and she was thrown carelessly to the ground. Most of the Alpha Pack had been separated and killed by Derek, Isaac, and Cora, while Stiles had trapped the twins in the bank with some voodoo powder (which he thought was serious irony), and none of them had reached Scott and Allison until it was too late. Of course, none of them had even known that Deucalion had been using Scott's mother as leverage, and no one, least of all Scott, had expected Allison to follow him to confront Deucalion.

Rose's eyes widened. "Oh."

Stiles takes pity on the girl, seeing how embarrassed she is. "You see, it's not that Scott doesn't like Savannah, because it's totally the opposite, he really does like her, but he's got some baggage. He's going through a hard time, and he was always really shy to begin with, anyway."

"So should I warn her off? Savannah's kind of an all or nothing kind of girl, and she'll throw herself head first into liking Scott if I don't stop her. Is there even a chance for her?"

"Scott is a really loving guy. He just had so much love in his heart that when it was gone, he just sort of… deflated."

"That's a good way to describe it." She says, thinking of the quiet boy who made a point to disappear in the back of the room at every opportunity.

"And it's in his nature to keep loving. I think that if anyone can help Scott, it's Savannah."

"I don't want her to be some kind of test subject, Stilinski. It isn't her job to fix him, and if he breaks her heart…"

"You're a good friend, Rose." Stiles says warmly.

"So are you, Stiles. You'd do anything to protect Scott, and that's why I'm sure that you'll understand that I'll do the same for Savannah. Meaning that I'll have to kick your ass if she gets hurt."

"Sounds to me that you just _really _want to kick my ass." He jokes, earning a roll of the eyes.

**Next chapter: We'll get to meet the mysterious Savannah, and maybe Rose and Stiles will start to play matchmaker! **


End file.
